The Sink by Eric Odynocki

Eric Odynocki is the 2nd place winner of Streetlight‘s 2022 Poetry Contest

Photo of woman laying in water
Photo by Callie Morgan on Unsplash
The Sink

glints like a boneyard, white plates peeking
over the rim like tusks or femurs with traces
of flesh or bolognese. This was not how
I imagined adulthood. Standing over a faucet
and scrubbing. An uncalled-for bicep exercise.
I swear the pots and dishes multiply when I don’t
look. Mental note: next home with dishwasher.
A must. Until then, each evening wanes into the drain.
Slosh, brillo, jenga on the rack. Sometimes, I listen
to a playlist, finesse the ring-around of my hand
and sponge with a one-two step or a spin, vacate
the present to vacation with the Go-Gos or wonder
with Whitney if she will ever, indeed, know. It’s better
than the tap’s whitenoise, the scream of glasses tumbling
beneath the soapy surface. I can forget the suds, how they
shimmer, balloon into crystalline planets large enough
to reflect the faces of all those gone now
who warned me never to grow up.


Eric Odynocki
Eric Odynocki is a first-generation American writer whose parents came from Mexico and Ukraine. Eric’s work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and has appeared in Jabberwock Review, The Brooklyn Review, PANK, and elsewhere. When not teaching Spanish or Italian, Eric is an MFA student at Stony Brook Southampton.

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